Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Rhythmbox Help

[Jonathan Matthew <jonathan d14n org>]

On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 6:29 AM, Milo Casagrande <miloc gnome org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm writing this email for the GNOME Doc Team. We would like to review
> and rewrite Rhythmbox manual using the new Mallard syntax [1] for the
> release of GNOME 3.0. This will be a complete rewrite of the manual
> into a more topic based document (to have an idea, check the new
> Empathy help [2]), using a new license (CreativeCommons 3.0 Unported -
> that's why we need to rewrite it).

Great!  The current manual is not in very good shape, and while I've
made a bit of a start at a rewrite (which currently only exists on my
laptop), I'm not making much progress.

> I have created a brainstorming wiki page on live.gnome.org [3] where
> everybody is free to add topics that can be addressed in the new help
> system. Feel free to add your suggestion there too.
>
> I would like to collect some information in order to better plan our
> work and before start to work on it:
> - Is it OK for you that we work on a new help system for RB?

Absolutely!

> - Is somebody else already working on it?

I've made a bit of a start. Some of what I've done would probably fit
into the outline you've proposed.

> - Do you have a release plan we can follow? Looking at the previous
> release you usually release a new version of RB just before the new
> GNOME release. Do you have an estimated release date?

This is one of the weaknesses of the project. I'm planning to follow
the GNOME release schedule more closely, but that doesn't always work
out..

> - Do you have a page or some information on the new feature that will
> be added in the future?

Not at present. At any given time I have about 15 feature branches in
private git repos where I'm working on things I haven't told anyone
about, so maybe I should just make that information more public?

In any case, I'm not planning any major changes to the basic structure
of the application, so I think if you were to proceed with the outline
as it is, there's very little risk that you'd end up with a manual
that was incorrect or misleading - there just might be some areas it
didn't cover yet. Once we have a working document structure, I'd like
to make updating the manual, or at least outlining the changes
required, part of the development process.

If you have any more questions, please feel free to raise them here or
in the #rhythmbox IRC channel.